Uncut Gems was doubly screwed at the Oscars. It should have been up for Best Picture, and Adam Sandler should not only have been nominated for Best Actor, he should have won, hands down. Instead, the picture and the performance were ignored. But ticket buyer beware: Many will find the film offensive. This is not Adam Sandler-the-nebbish that we’ve come to know and perhaps love (or perhaps not); in this electrifying crime thriller, he plays Howard, a raw, desperate, hard-to-watch hustler at the end of his rope. When he makes a series of high-stakes bets that could lead to the windfall of a lifetime, he must perform a precarious high-wire act, balancing business and family while fending off threatening adversaries on all sides in his relentless pursuit of the ultimate win. Like it or hate it, you’ve never seen anything quite like Uncut Gems.

“Sandler is so good, so committed and so watchable that, despite everything–Howard’s irrationality, a rogue’s gallery of unpleasant characters, the foreboding of a bad, bad end–you can’t take your eyes off the screen, which Sandler seldom vacates.” —
Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post